


Looking to the Future

by fmt



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Eventual Relationships, London, M/M, Ministry of Magic, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:05:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmt/pseuds/fmt
Summary: Harry isn’t long out of Hogwarts before he is swept up on a mysterious quest. Draco Malfoy is involved somehow - but on whose side? Harry’s mission is to find out but it isn’t long before both of them are swept up in murder, intrigue, and possibly, the end of the world, yet again. No biggie.





	1. Preface and Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Harry Potter's world is the creation of J.K.Rowling! All rights to her. 
> 
> PLEASE READ AND REVIEW

Preface  
He just wanted it all to stop. He needed it all to stop. Hermione, Ron, all of it. All of them. The stupid, pride-ridden Gryffindors, strutting down the halls. Flush with the knowledge that they were right and victorious and crackling with righteous anger and hurt at the lives lost.   
The Slytherins (few of them that there were) with their sorrow that no one could quite understand and battered pride and fierce protectiveness of the youngest who didn’t quite understand.   
His nightmares, most of all. Harry wished more than anything that those would stop. Nightmare wasn’t really the right word. Not quite. Memories would have been better but the images that flashed before his eyes didn’t belong to him. It was a narrative he saw every night, of the war and of before. Of babies born in fear and men who laughed in sadness and women who cried with the ache of love. Harry saw Fred and George, chasing a gnome with chubby toddler fingers outstretched. He saw Hermione raise her shaking arm and obliviate her parents with a hoarse whisper. He saw Malfoy, writhing on the floor, held down by Fenrir Greyback as he was forced to take the Dark Mark.  
He saw thousands of memories every time he closed his eyes, a curse and a blessing and everything in between.   
He wanted it to stop. 

Chapter 1  
Harry walked down the steps of Gryffindor Tower for what he was sure would be the last time. His trunk was shrunken in his pocket; next to an empty owl cage he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. The hallway he trudged down was empty, sun streaming through the thick glass windows, illuminating cobwebs clinging to the corners and the trademark gleam of restorative charms that had been used to bring the castle back to life.   
And something else. Something brighter. Harry looked up as a flash of something light winked in his periphery and disappeared around a corner.   
Quickening his pace, Harry followed. Paranoia wasn’t paranoia if you were right, he told himself. Besides, everyone should have been in the courtyard, celebrating the combined 7th and 8th year graduation and saying their goodbyes. Harry could have been down there with them, except for a bittersweet nostalgia that compelled him to say goodbye to the castle alone, one last time.   
Harry sped up, turning one last corner and skidding into a dead end. Huh. Unless this was a trap… pushing the thought out of his mind, Harry walked to the wall, footsteps hushed on quiet stone. There was no telltale tapestry here, hiding a secret passageway but something…there. Harry reached a finger out and traced a crack in the wall the jumped around as he looked at it, pulsating with magical energy. Looking harder at the mark, Harry was startled to discover that the tip of his finger was touching nothing at all and indeed, was nowhere in sight. Pushing first a hand through the buzz and then an arm, Harry took a deep breath and stepped his entire body through.   
Just like the first time he walked through the barrier on Platform 9 and three quarters, no amount of preparation could have prepared him for what came next. Harry entered a completely glass room, floor to ceilings. The Black Lake stretched in front of him, surrounded by the dense green of the Forbidden Forest, beyond which mountains reached for what seemed like miles, a sprawl of valleys and peaks.   
And there, in front of him was the person Harry had seen disappear around that corner. Draco Malfoy, standing with his back to Harry, hands in his pockets and sadness in his slouch. Harry took a step closer and then another. Still, Malfoy did not move. The silence stretched on. Harry had hardly seen Malfoy since the final battle. A glimpse here and there in the hallways or the library, but never accompanied by the old taunting gaze or fighting words. Harry had seen that Malfoy had lost his fire, and his mind raced back to the day when the fate of the Malfoy family was decided in court. Despite Harry’s testimony, and his heartfelt assurances that he would not have been alive without the family, the worst outcome had come to pass. Lucius Malfoy, who had sat silently for days as the Wizengamot had argued over his case, had been given the Dementor’s Kiss. Draco, incredibly and bizarrely had been treated with incredibly suspicious leniency, allowed to keep his wand and ancestral lands, with only 6 months of community service. But as for Narcissa…Harry swallowed hard and closed his eyes, thinking of her fate. When Narcissa exited the courtroom upon receiving her own, lenient sentence of a year in Azkaban, the angry crowd outside had revolted. No one could quite remember what happened, and each and every single Penseive memory collected was clouded by fog, but when the aurors swarmed in and the crowd cleared out, there lay the body of Narcissa Regina Malfoy, completely undisturbed except for the unmistakable pallor of death.   
Pushing the thoughts out of his mind, Harry took one more step forward and reached out an arm to tap Malfoy hesitantly on the shoulder. Draco did not start like Harry had expected him to, nor did he even move. Instead he spoke, his voice scratchy from disuse and infused with an emotion Harry could not identify.   
“This has always been my favorite room in the castle”  
Harry, who had never been in this room before, nor in fact, seen it on the Marauder’s Map, regarded Malfoy’s back warily. That such a room wasn’t on the map that Padfoot, Moony, Wormtail, and Prongs hadn’t discovered it in their time at Hogwarts, unusual given the scope of their nocturnal wanderings, but not out of the question. Harry himself, plagued with unwillingness to fall prey to the dreams and nightmares that haunted him every night had become something of an insomniac. He had wandered the castle every night since returning to complete his final year at Hogwarts and had found several mostly insignificant secret rooms and passageways that the Map didn’t show. But he thought he had found everything Hogwarts had to offer and was rather peeved to discover otherwise.   
Harry spoke, his eyes still trained on Malfoy’s back and behind him, the startling mountain view.   
“I’ve never been here before”.   
“Hardly surprising, is it?” Malfoy said.   
“Is it?” Harry echoed.   
“This room…” Malfoy hesitated “Is special”.   
“Special how?” Harry asked, becoming annoyed by Malfoy’s seemingly unintentional air of mystery.   
“It only appears to people who have a need for it”  
“Like the Room of Requirement?” Harry interrupted.   
“In some ways, yes, but this room has a predetermined need in mind”. Here Malfoy trailed off, apparently reluctant to share more information.   
“And?” Harry prompted, feeling the heat of his temper, unexercised in so long, rising to the surface.   
“It only appears to those who are looking towards the future, striving to escape their past. To those people who are changing so rapidly, whose live are or were so out of their control that the room feels the need to compensate for some of that control”   
“Then why me, why now? Why did you bring me here?” Harry demanded. He thought that as a matter of fact, he had the more control over his life then he had had in years. But Harry also did not doubt that Malfoy had led him here with a purpose.   
Malfoy paused yet again and finally turned so that he was facing Harry although his eyes were still miles away.   
“I first found this room in the second month of my first year. A seventh year led me here just as I did you, although I never did find out who it was. I didn’t understand it at first, but I sought solace here more and more every year that I returned to Hogwarts. I found an old edition of Hogwarts, A History that hinted at the creator of the room and from there I was able to trace its probable use, but it wasn’t until sixth year that I began to truly understand. I started spending nearly very minute not spent in class or at meals here – Crabbe and Goyle were under orders to report the progress I was making on the Vanishing Cabinet to their fathers, so I would disappear to the Room of Hidden Things. From there I would simply require a passageway, hidden behind a large portrait of Bast the Breaker. The rest of Slytherin House had become rather hostile towards me, given my father’s downfall from power and my own rather obvious unwillingness to aid the Dark Lord’s cause”. Malfoy took a deep breath and his eyes dropped to the floor, now masked by impossibly long, impossibly dark eyelashes.   
“That doesn’t explain why you’re showing it to me now” Harry burst out, frustrated.   
“Because” Draco said, moving his silver eyes up to finally meet Harry’s green ones. “You have incredible strengths but we share too many of the same weaknesses. You make assumptions about things, about the order of the world. You whole-heartedly believed that all of Slytherin House was evil and that you could do it on your own, and that you knew al of Hogwarts’s secrets, but here we are. One last secret”. Malfoy reached out and clasped Harry on the shoulder briefly, before turning to leave. This small gesture felt shocking intimate to Harry who was already flushed with the truth of Malfoy’s words and he was reminded of another gesture, many years ago when Malfoy had offered his hand in friendship and Harry had rejected it.   
“Wait” Harry called. Malfoy, who already had one foot through the invisible barrier, did so and turned back to face him. Harry impulsively outstretched his arm. Malfoy hesitated for only a split second before accepting the handshake, firm and strong, before disappearing completely.   
Harry stood there for a moment longer, admiring the incredible view and the mystery that Malfoy had unveiled before walking out as well, glancing back just once.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All rights to JKR <3

Chapter Two  
Exactly one year and one day later, Harry sat in an office on the negative thirty-seventh floor of the Ministry of Magic. The office belonged to him, although a plaque on the door still held the name of its previous occupant. Harry gazed out of the magically created view of the London skyline and swiveled in his chair, pondering exactly how he had gotten to this point.   
Exactly one year minus one day ago, Harry had moved to London with Hermione and Ron. One year minus one week ago, Hermione and Ron had moved out and Harry began looking for his own flat. The plan to live together in Grimmauld Place while Harry and Ron started auror training and Hermione started classes at MULE, the Magical University of London Economics ground to a shrieking halt. Living together was going just fine until each of them began feeling ill, more sick that when the horcrux had been hanging around their necks. It wasn’t long before Ron discovered a corner of black mold in the bathroom on the third floor, and a well-aimed Reducto curse revealed an infestation that probably crept through the walls, top to bottom.   
“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be”. Hermione and Harry silently agreed, and as one, turned to pack their belongings.   
Hermione and Ron, aided by George who insisted that no cause was worthier than his helpless little brother, quickly located and bought a small flat on the edge of a quiet wizarding neighborhood, Penumbra. Harry stayed with them for a week before realizing that he craved more space, more room to spread out. He rather suspected the itchy feeling making his skin crawl every time he entered the flat had something to do with having spent his formative years in a cupboard, but he chose to ignore this and instead focused on negotiating the price for a large, airy, loft. The final price was also not something he cared to dwell on, but having finally inherited the entirety of the Potter and Black estates, he consoled himself by giving the same amount to the Wizarding Home for Orphans, with similar donations to be made in the future.   
As auror training ramped up, Harry found he relished having a place to return to every night, a place where he could take his shoes off and turn the radio up and leave the dishes out if he wanted to. All this was normal, and he was content if not exactly happy, working alongside Ron to learn new defensive spells and duel and capture criminals and do paperwork (really, mostly do paperwork if he was being completely honest with himself). And then one day that all came to a end. Harry had been speeding away from the office, sent to bring coffee to several aurors (who greatly enjoyed giving orders to the Boy-Who-Lived), when he walked past a large, brightly colored sig. It was reminiscent of something Fred and George would have put up in their shop to attract attention.  
“Do you like mystery?” it read. “Enjoy finding the right answer? Come to the negative 37th floor”. Puzzled by its vagueness and the luridly bright colors, Harry had pushed the sign out of his mind and hurried on to the canteen. But at the end of the day, as Ron hurriedly apparated home to Hermione, Harry found himself drawn (as if by magic!) to the elevator and upstairs. As he stepped out of the elevator and onto shiny, polished floor, Harry read the sign behind the welcome desk with some trepidation.   
Bureau of Magical Investigation   
The witch behind the desk looked up from inspecting her nails (one nail in particular seemed to be presenting a problem) and waved her hand in the direction of a door, just behind and to the right of the desk. Harry opened his mouth to speak, but the witch shook her head once and waved her hand again. Harry found himself reaching for the door handle and entering before he could stop himself. The room he entered was huge, but a single mahogany table was the only furniture in sight. Twelve figures sat around the table, and as Harry stood in the doorway, a deep voice called out:   
“Harry Potter. Auror Trainee. Vote.”  
Harry watched in stunned disbelief as one by one, each figure raised their hand and said “Aye”. After the twelfth person had spoken in affirmation (although affirmation of what was still very much unclear), Harry found himself pulled out of the room by the same force that had pushed him in, and probably whatever had pulled him to the negative 37th floor to begin with. The witch behind the desk, now engaged in examining her hair for split ends, looked up. This time, the smile she gave him was sympathetic rather than vapid. She pulled out a thick sheath of parchment and what appeared to be a muggle manila envelope and slid it across the desk to Harry.   
“Go home” She said, voice surprisingly husky. “Take a day off from work. Read this cover to cover”.   
“But what” Harry started, faltering as he realized he didn’t know what to ask. He felt more blindsided and confused than he had when Hagrid had told him that he was a wizard.   
“Read”. The witch said again. This time her smile was patient and kind and the wave of her hand that pushed Harry back into the elevator was gentle and somehow soothing.   
Harry felt the weight of the papers as he took the elevator up to the Atrium, as he stood in line for the floo network, as he spun around in brilliant green flames, and as he stepped out two streets from his flat. He felt them as he stood in line at the greengrocers and as he climbed the last step into his doorway.   
He pulled the files out and placed them on his desk. Sitting, he stared at them for a full minute before he opened the first and began to read. And read and read. And it was because of those papers that he found himself here. In a new-old office on the negative 37th floor of the Ministry of Magic. For those papers had contained a job description and the Manila envelope a very personal letter and a key, signed by none other than his father. His father. The job description explained that, should he choose to accept, Harry would work for the Bureau of Magical Investigation in a role similar to auror, just one with slightly more secrets and subterfuge. A more international element, they went on to explain, although they really explained little else. Harry hadn’t realized that he was taking the whole ridiculous thing seriously until he read the letter. A very real letter with a Magical Seal of Authenticity and the signature of James F. Potter right at the bottom. Thinking of it now, Harry opened a desk drawer and withdrew it, the only contents the drawer held.   
Dear Harry, (it read)  
I have no doubt that this is probably as strange for you as it is for me. However, if you are reading this letter now it means that you have received it under extremely peculiar circumstances. It also means that I have passed away. By now, unfortunately, I’m sure you are aware of the great capacity for evil this world holds and the strength and stamina it takes to conquer it. Fighting against this evil is what I have spent my years doing since leaving Hogwarts and all the Potters before me have done the same. In case it hasn’t already been made clear to you (and I daresay it hasn’t) I work for the Bureau of Magical Investigation and we need you. We need you to join us and we need everything you can give us. I know that you will have been voted in without a hitch and the job description you have been given is frightfully unclear but I beg of you, my son. Join us and trust us and save the world, one more time.   
Your loving father,   
James F. Potter

Harry placed the letter back with a sigh and shut the drawer. He had chosen to trust the letter, to trust his father and although there were still some things (many things, really) he didn’t understand he knew he had made the right decision. It had been the witch with the husky voice surprisingly to clarify everything. Her name was Calista, Callie for short and she wasn’t a welcome witch at all but rather the deputy head of communications for the Bureau.   
“Think of us just like the aurors” She had told him around bites of a sandwich. She had surprised Harry on his lunch break the day after he received that manila envelope.   
“More sophisticated, less bogged down by bureaucracy, but still similar. We just happen to operate on a more international scale, and as of right now, have only a single mission”   
“Just one?” Harry asked, surprised. The aurors had hundreds of cases, with new ones coming in everyday and there were never nearly enough aurors to go around.   
“Just one” Callie repeated, flicking a strand of long, honey-colored hair behind her shoulder and wandlessly throwing a privacy shield around their table.   
“It goes like this” she began, settling in her chair as if she were about to tell a long story. Harry settled in to listen. “For many years, something has been afoot. Something bad. In Europe, in the Americas, around the rest of the world. Our only mission – indeed what we were created to do is to find out what it is and end it. Whatever this is, its happening so slowly that no one noticed for many years, maybe even for decades. But slowly, very slowly legislation is being put in place. Leaders are dying, one by one, usually of completely natural causes and being replaced by new, younger leaders. Wizarding neighborhoods are pulling into themselves, becoming condensed. And we think that all of this is happening with a goal in mind, that there’s someone or maybe several someone’s out there pulling the strings. Its really incredibly complex, and far more nuanced than this but we don’t have all year so I’ll just say this. There’s a foundation being put in place, piece by piece for someone – and we don’t even know who – to become the supreme leader of the Wizarding World. And once they’re there – once they’re in place – it will be to late. We’ll be trapped”. Her expression was neutral, as if she were merely recounting the weather, but her eyes said she was deadly serious.   
“Like Voldemort?” Harry asked, throat dry as images from the persisting nightmares flashed through his head.   
“Worse” Callie said, taking a sip of her tea. These plans were in place long before Voldemort, before his desperate play for power, and remained after you defeated him Harry. This is more dangerous because we don’t know who or what is behind it, and despite years of research, their objective is still only a guess. All we know is that the clues we find, what little sense we are able to make off all this is that it’s bad. Really bad.”   
“And what do I do? Harry asked, suddenly feeling hopeless. “What, exactly, is my job?”  
Callie looked at him, gaze steady.   
“Draco Malfoy”  
Harry choked on his pastry. That had really been the last thing in the world he had expected to hear.   
“We need him. He’s tested as having the highest MIG in the world. In the six months since you’ve left Hogwarts, he’s worked his way through the research to earn two muggle doctorates and he’s well on his way to the magical equivalent of a third”.   
“MIQ?” Harry questioned weakly. He couldn’t believe this, he really couldn’t.   
“Magical Intelligence Quotient” He’s got to be involved in this somehow, and if by some miracle he isn’t, we need him on our side. Your mission is to find out which, and to learn as much as you can as quickly as possible. We need you to finish auror training as usual – those qualifications might come in handy – but when you finish it, you’ll be working for us, not them. Understood?”  
She uncrossed her legs and stood up, dispelling the privacy charm with a graceful wave of her hand.   
“We’ll be in touch. And don’t worry. You were born to do this”.   
“Th-thank you?” Harry managed to get out before Cassie left, long hair swinging in a glossy curtain down her back.   
Harry had done as she suggested to begin with. He took the rest of the day off, but spent most of it staring out the wide windows of his loft, trying to wrap his mind around this latest surprise of his one-time archenemy. The intelligence wasn’t what surprised him. They had always known Draco was smart, smarter than Hermione even because while Hermione always seemed to be buried in books for school, Draco never cracked a book. Hermione would beat him by exactly one question every time and Harry knew, without a doubt that Malfoy was getting those questions wrong on purpose. As foe the rest…Harry’ mind drifted back to that last day of school.   
“It only appears to those who are looking towards the future, striving to escape their past” Malfoy had said. Maybe it did make sense after all.


End file.
